COPENHAGEN, THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONS AND THE FAMILY OF MAN

No Climate Change Leader as Nations Meet
Neil MacFarQuhar, September 19, 2009 (NY Times)
and
Climate deal in peril, says Brown
Roger Harrabin, 21 September 2009 (BBC News)

SUMMARY
ONe day before Wednesday’s convening of the United Nations General Assembly for its autumn session, the UN Summit on Climate Change and the UN Leadership Forum on Climate Change, the biggest top-level meetings on global climate change ever held, will review the international differences standing in the way of a new world agreement to fight greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs).

They will bring together political leaders, CEOs, civil society leaders and UN agency heads to focus on the need for urgent action, mobilize high-level political will and advance negotiations toward a new agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen this December.

Differences between the nations of the world at present are many, serious and concern trillions of dollars. The stakes, potentially determinative of the earth's habitability over the coming century, are inconceivably high. The question, however, is simple: Will the community of nations find a way to protect the family of man?

click to enlarge

COMMENTARY
Nero, it is said, fiddled while Rome burned. The UN Tuesday will hold a day-long fiddle fest.

It is drama too high for the theater; only opera would suit it. Find a way to work together or separately get ready to drown or die of thirst or starve or fight to the death over dwindling arable land, water and resources.

Everybody but the denialist dead-enders agrees the rising of the world’s average temperature has to be stopped. They agree the way to do it is to stop the spew of GhGs from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests. Yet there is as yet little agreement on means.

UN organizers have reportedly never put together summits of such high-level participants without a pre-agreement on the outcome.

The summits were organized as a means of bringing the world’s nations closer to agreement on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocols. The Kyoto treaty was written in 1997 and finally effectuated in 2005. It expires in 2012. Most observers agree its successor will require at least 2 years to be ratified. If an international agreement does not come out of the summit in Copenhagen in December, it will probably not be in place when the Kyoto Protocols expire, leaving the world’s nations free to do their worst.



Why is there no pre-agreement on the summits' outcomes? Because there is very little pre-agreement for action.

To avoid the worst impacts of global climate change, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the global average temperature rise must be held to 2 degrees Fahrenheit. To do that, climate scientists say the GhG concentration of the atmosphere must be no higher than 350 parts-per-million (ppm). It is now at almost 390 ppm and rising 1-to-2 ppm every year. (See 350)

click thru for more info

The debate begins with the question of who should pay to reverse the trend and gets into the deep bog over how to reverse the trend.

The most obvious and deep division in the world community of nations is, not surprisingly, economic. Although innumerable studies show shifting to a New Energy economy now would set the world up for sustainable long-term growth and prosperity, shortsighted industrial and Old Energy habitues continue to believe that cutting emissions costs money and slows growth.

Emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia will not sign on because they would have to take back to their exploding industrial communities limits on how much and what kind of energy they can use. Developed economies like the U.S. and the EU have electorates perhaps more amenable to some kind of limits on growth. But their established industrial communities will nevertheless hesitate to participate while their most aggressive competitors refuse to assent to comparable limits.

It is not like the emerging economies are doing nothing. Both China and India have begun to realize the enormous opportunity in building New Energy and Energy Efficiency. China is already building it faster than the U.S. and, if India’s recently announced solar energy ambitions are indicative, it may soon be building faster than the U.S. as well. But the emerging economies say the developed economies should fund their New Energy ambitions because climate change is largely the result of GhGs now lingering in the atmosphere that were emitted during the West’s industrial revolution and rise to economic power.

click to enlarge

UN leadership wants the West to come up with $500-to-$600 billion dollars a year, about 1% of world GDP. The EU has counter-offered $100-to-$150 billion per year over 10 years. The U.S. is not yet bargaining but pending legislation allots $5 billion in the fight against international deforestation.

Money is far from the only sticking point. The present draft agreement for a new international effort to cut GhGs is long, more than 200 pages, and immensely complicated, with “a couple of thousand brackets” indicating unsettled points. It is easy to understand why insiders are starting to think there will be no international accord.

The developed nations are talking about cuts bringing emissions to perhaps 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 while the IPCC says they need to be 25%-to-40% below 1990 by then. Developing nations, led by India and China, have so far refused to commit to any cuts without commitments from the West on funding. The U.S. has so far insisted the goal to cut emissions should be a national, not international, commitment.

Smaller and poorer countries have more specific concerns. Island nations want more aggressive action because rising seas could swallow or ruin them. Impoverished and struggling African nations may dramatize their demand for $300 billion in climate change adaptation assistance with a walkout from the larger of the summits. New Zealand wants more attention given to managing the agricultural factors that generate 13%-to-14% of the world’s GhGs but poorer agriculture-dependent nations fear such regulation could lead to food shortages and hunger.

click to enlarge

Some hope President Obama, in his speech at the opening of the General Assembly, will announce a significant U.S. change of direction. President Hu Jintao of China is also speaking at the opening session and climate watchers are also hoping for something from him that will offer a way forward. (See THE INTENSITY OF EMISSIONS below.) Between them, China and the U.S. are responsible for 40% of the world’s GhG spew. If they can work out their differences, a new international treaty will be within reach.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has dropped his previously arranged agenda and is flying to New York to sit in on the summit and the behind-the-scenes talks. He told the BBC he sees the very real possibility of an international agreement failing.

These UN summits and a working group planned for Spain in November will be the last opportunities before Copenhagen.

Answers being given by Senate leaders to probing questions in the past week suggest climate legislation may not get through the U.S. Congress before the December summit. (See WILL SENATE BLOCK WORLD CLIMATE ACTION? below.) This would be determinative of the fate of a Copenhagen deal were it not also indicative of the fact that U.S. leaders do not expect a deal to which they can assent to be available at Copenhage anyway.

International days of action are planned for October 24 by 350.org and for November 30 by The Mobilization for Climate Justice (MCJ), a network of activist grassroots groups, to call the public’s attention to the Copenhagen summit and let the participants know the nation is watching. Global Climate Campaign, which has been building resources and organizational networks since 2005, plans action during the conference on December 12.

From citywestproductions via YouTube

QUOTES
- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “I have been urging them to speak and to act as global leaders; just go beyond their national boundaries…”
- UN Assistant Secretary General for Policy Planning Robert Orr: “They won’t do it one by one…Politically, they all have to jump together, and this is the essence of this summit. We will see if any governments are ready to say, ‘I am stepping through the door now; are you going to come with me?’ That would be a huge break.”
- Kim Carstensen, Global Climate Initiative Director, World Wildlife Fund: “The mood in the negotiations has been that I should do as little as possible as late as possible and let the other person go first…”
- Timothy E. Wirth, President, United Nations Foundation and climate change negotiator: “We don’t want to get hung up on trying to say that the U.S. and China will reduce the same percentage or the same amount…”
- Jeffrey Sachs, Director,Earth Institute at Columbia University: “The instinct is a kind of nationalist response that can get it exactly backwards…We should be viewing this as global problem solving, not as global negotiation.”
- UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: "What has now become clear is that the push toward decarbonisation will be one of the major drivers of global and national economic growth over the next decade…And the economies which embrace the green revolution earliest will reap the greatest economic rewards."